Over the past few days, there has been an increasing sense of disappointment among the vocal middle class. They feel let down that prime minister Narendra Modi has not acted decisively in the affair triggered by the revelations regarding the former India Premier League chief Lalit Modi. The opposition parties also seemed outraged that he has not lived up to his promise of fighting corruption. But if we examine all the issues in the light of the past behaviour, then clearly the fault lies with us, dear voters.
We have seen chief minister Narendra Modi come under intense criticism for his record of the 2002 Gujarat riots. He is described as the most scrutinized man by his lieutenant-in-chief Arun Jaitley. Now Modi did not resign even when the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee spoke of following the raj dharma. The man who now talks of probity in public life, L K Advani, defended Modi to the hilt. See the fruits of that policy — Modi is the prime minister and Advani a disgruntled old man who is constricted to speaking in generalities about the concentration of power in the hands of one person. Let us not forget that it was Advani who laid the foundations of the principle that a chief minister need not resign unless finally indicted by a court of law. So, the paradigm under Modi is well-defined, and with huge precedents.
Very simply put, if Modi did not resign in 2002, and B S Yeddyurappa continued as Karnataka chief minister with all the charges from 2007 onwards, and Shivraj Singh Chauhan brazens out the Vyapam scam in which 50 persons have died and more than 1800 arrested then why should Vasundhara Raje Scindia resign in 2015? Compared to the offences of others, her crimes are like a parking ticket?
Can you rule out that when she makes this argument backed up by the muscle of her MLAs in the Rajasthan assembly, the BJP leadership has neither the moral, nor the political leverage, to demand her resignation; indeed, they have to ensure that she does not rebel against them and form her own government. The party high command system in the Congress, where the chief ministers resign at a signal from Delhi, works because the appointees are political nobody. They owe their career to the high command. In the BJP, a regional satrap from the pre-Modi era is a pretty powerful leader in his or her own right. Scindia is no Devendra Fadnavis or Manohar Lal Khattar, who have been hand-picked by the central leadership and are thus beholden to the central leadership. She is a leader in her own right and had the party leadership on tenterhooks even during her days as an opposition leader.
The best part about the BJP is that nothing has been brushed under the carpet. They are brazen about caring two hoots for all the norms of probity and morality. We get to know of this attitude from the man who knows a thing or two about the way the party functions. Union home minister Rajnath Singh, also a former national president, said it all with a wry smile. Our ministers do not resign, this is not the UPA, he said. Singh was laying out a sound political strategy. Look at what happened to Sonia Gandhi’s party? In her search for the moral high ground via the resignation route, she sacrificed Ashok Chavan in Maharashtra and half a dozen ministers at the centre. The result: Congress got wiped out in Maharashtra and was reduced to its lowest tally of 44 in the Lok Sabha. There are many within the BJP who believe that the party would not have lost in Karnataka in 2012, if they had not sacked Yeddyurappa as chief minister. The political strategists believe that resignations are self-goals, and that if you buckle under pressure and make one person step down then the chain is endless. After all if links with Lalit Modi are to become the basis of the resignations of the chief minister and the minister then the prime minister himself does not remain immune from the same demand. So, unless there is some change in the strategic understanding of the BJP, or there are some more compelling reasons, it should not be expected that Modi the prime minister would be in some kind of haste to sack the tainted four — Scindia, Sushma Swaraj, Smriti Irani or Pankaja Munde. Within this lot, however Irani appears to be the most vulnerable. But this was even before the court found the false affidavit case against her admissible. Shah had dropped her from the national executive, which is enough of an indication that she is out of favour.
However, it is not this conclusion that is damning for the BJP. It shall brazen it out and face the consequences of the decisions. The problem however is the rising voices of internal dissent. After Advani fired the first salvo, it appears that disgruntled leaders at different levels are finding their voice. That Kirti Azad spoke against Jaitley can be explained to the rivalries within the cricket administration. But both R K Singh the former home secretary and Raj Purohit the MLA from Colaba have dared to cross the party line. Such direct challenges to the party bosses and clear violations of the party line could be read as signs of the weakening central authority vested in the Modi-Shah combine.
There are many political observers, some even sympathetic to the BJP, who believe that should the party fail to capture power in the next elections in Bihar, then there could be a snowballing effect among those who have been side-lined by the present dispensation. Similarly, if the government’s agenda does not get fulfilled during the forthcoming monsoon session, and the bills like Land Acquisition and the GST constitutional amendment do not get Parliament’s nod, then the Modi Sarkar shall have major perception and credibility problems.
